Tyler Durden's Fight Club Blog

Isaac Caldiero competed in season 5 and season 6 of the US version of the show before he completed all of the stages in the Grand Final in the quickest time in season 7 in 2015.

The first season I went straight into the competition with zero training, I hadn’t even tried a single obstacle in my entire life. I made it all the way to the finals. I feel like I did really good my first year without any training apart from 16 years of rock climbing which is a huge benefit obviously on the upper body obstacles.

The second year I was so obsessed and I learned from my mistakes from the year before. I trained like a madman. At the time there were no Ninja gyms to practice obstacles, so I have about 12 years of construction experience and I built a little Ninja torture chamber in my parents’ backyard and I was just going at it seven days a week non-stop for about two or three months prior to the finals.

Between rock climbing and doing specific Ninja training, that was the basis of my strength and how I built all my skills. I was living, eating, breathing Ninja Warrior. I was non-stop watching episodes from Japan and from America, just trying to learn as much as I could. I couldn’t stop. I overdosed on it.

To fall and to have it all over, you just kind of get into this deep dark depression. It sounds kind of silly but after giving it your all and dedicating yourself 100 per cent and being so sure of yourself and your skills and then falling on something that you’ve done a million times blindfolded ... it was heartbreaking.

In the third season, I made a big point not to train as much as I did in the year prior and to not take it as seriously. I was working full-time as a busboy in Colorado and I was just doing very minimal amounts of training. I changed everything up and just went into it with a different mentality. But all that training from the previous year was still with me so I didn’t really need a whole lot of training.

Absolutely not. It takes a lot more because there are so many other aspects of the competition apart from the climbing. You can take the best climbers in the world and they can’t do some of the basic upper body obstacles even though they have the upper body strength. It’s so technical and it’s full of weird sensations that are counterintuitive to climbing.

The lower body stuff is a whole different story as well. Learning how to jump on trampolines, learning how to tune in your balance. So yeah, it’s a lot more than rock-climbing. You have to have the full package.

Something that I really feel set me apart from a lot of the other competitors ... was the mental aspect. Everyone has different methods of training mentally but I do a lot of breathing and meditation exercises.

Also, I did a specific style of climbing called free solo climbing [that’s where a climber performs alone and without using any ropes, harnesses or other protective equipment]. I’m not telling people to go out and try and hurt themselves by climbing without a rope, but that’s something I did a lot of and so my mentality is basically, it’s all or nothing. My life is literally in my own hands and if I fall I die. I take that same mentality and focus that I’ve learned from so many years of doing that and I apply it to the Ninja course.

I would say, as much as possible, people should try to recreate that stress and that focus on their body without actually going out and free solo climbing. But they should go out with that same level of seriousness and also they need to work on their breathing with different exercises.

The first year I wore a lot of rubber climbing shoes and on rock and really porous surfaces climbing shoes work amazing. But that’s not the case on Ninja obstacles. They’re very slick.

Something that I found that was a gamechanger for me was wearing more of a street running shoe. They’re not too hard but rather soft and tacky. The ones I like the most are discontinued but New Balance make a whole array of different styles that are pretty good. The ones I use are the MR10s, they’re pretty awesome.

Everybody wants someone to win it ... but the truth of the matter is that it takes a lot of time. I don’t know how many Ninja gyms are available in Australia for people to train at but it’s only a matter of time before people get their hands on more obstacles and learn more and train more.

It’s the same thing that happened in America. When I started there were maybe a few Ninja gyms in the country so it was really hard to find a facility to train on all the obstacles and now, there’s probably well over 150 gyms in the country. So it’s going to take a few years.

Also, the obstacles in the beginning [in America] were not very hard. The first year in Australia, if you compare the obstacles to the ones in Japan or America that have been going for so long, if they made them the same difficulty [in Australia] nobody would stand a chance.

It’s a slow progression, so for all the Aussie viewers, you’ve got to be patient and you’ll crown a Ninja champion soon.

Absolutely. I would love to go to Australia, that would be a dream come true. Any Ninja Warrior opportunities in Australia would be very cool. I could even come out and be a guest commentator on the show or something like that.

Stay motivated, stay passionate and stay focused. And just make sure you’re having fun. That’s the most important thing.